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Bio:

Ada Ferrer is Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She holds an AB in English from Vassar College, an MA in History from the University of Texas at Austin, and PhD in History from the University of Michigan. She has been teaching at NYU since January, 1995.

Her research focuses on the history of slavery, race, and revolution in Latin America, with a particular interest in the history of Cuba, Haiti, and the Caribbean. She is also interested in questions of historical method, archives, and historical writing. Her first book, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), explored the history of racism and antiracism in Cuba’s wars of independence, in which slaves and former slaves were majority participants. It received the 2000 Berkshire Book Prize for the best first book by a woman in any field of history. A French translation was published by Pérseides (Paris) in 2010 and Spanish translation by Editorial de Ciencias Sociales (Havana) in 2011. Her second book, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2014. The book examines the links between the Haitian Revolution in Saint-Domingue and the entrenchment of slavery in colonial Cuba. It received multiple awards and honors, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Race, and Resistance; the Frederich Katz, Wesley-Logan, and James Rawley Prizes from the American Historical Association, and the Haiti Illumination Prize from the Haitian Studies Association. She continues to work on the 1812 antislavery conspiracy led by free black carpenter in Havana, José Antonio Aponte, while also doing research on several other projects on C.L.R. James, Antonio Maceo, Cádiz, and Maine (the state, not the ship).

She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba, as well as colloquia on a range of topics from comparative slavery, Afro-Latin America, the Haitian Revolution and the Atlantic World, and comparative revolution, among other topics.

Fellowships/Honors:

2015 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for the best book on slavery from the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Race, and Resistance; the 2015 Frederich Katz Prize for the best book in Latin American History from the American Historical Association, the 2015 Wesley-Logan Prize for the best book in African Diaspora history from the AHA , and the 2015 James Rawley Prize also from the AHA for the best book in Atlantic World History; the 2015 Haiti Illumination Book Prize from the Haitian Studies Association; Honorable Mention for the PROSE Award in European and World History. John Hope Franklin Prize (Law and Society Association) for the Best Article on Race and Racism, 2013. Berkshire Conference Article Prize, 2013. Paul Vanderwood Prize, Conference on Latin American History, 2013. American Council of Learned Societes/NEH/SSRC Fellowship in Area Studies, 2011-2012, Berkshire Book Prize for Insurgent Cuba (for the best first book by a woman historian in any field of history), Spanish Ministry of Culture Fellowship, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2003-2004, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2000-2001

Selected Works:

Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

"The Archive and the Atlantic's Haitian Revolution," in Doris Lorraine Garraway, ed., Tree of Liberty: Atlantic Legacies of the Haitian Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.)